the space of argumentation_urban design, civic discourse, and the dream of the good city

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The Space of Argumentation: Urban Design, CivicDiscourse, and the Dream of the Good City

DAVID FLEMING

Department of English

New Mexico State University

Box 30001, Dept. 3E

Las Cruces, NM 88003-0001

U.S.A.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I explore connections between two disciplines not typically

linked: argumentation theory and urban design. I first trace historical ties between the art of

reasoned discourse and the idea of civic virtue. I next analyze discourse norms implicit inthree theories of urban design: Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities

(1961), Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (1977),

and Peter Katz’s The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1994). I then

propose a set of ‘settlement’ issues of potential interest to both urban designers and argu-

mentation theorists: size, density, heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. I conclude

by suggesting that the ‘good city’ be seen as both a spatial and a discursive entity. From

such a perspective, good public discourse is dependent, at least in part, on good public space;

and good public space is defined, at least in part, as a context conducive to good public

discourse.

KEY WORDS: Argumentation, rhetoric, urban design, civic discourse, city, public space

INTRODUCTION

The profession or discipline of urban design presents the argumentation

scholar with two distinct intellectual projects. In one, the object of inquiry

is the role of reason-giving, value-laden, socially-situated discourse in the

planning of urban space. This project participates in the so-called ‘rhetor-

ical turn’ of contemporary social analysis, in which a discursive or argu-

mentative component is located in endeavors previously thought to be

matters of artistic expression or technical reason.

1

Such inquiry can beuseful, both by alerting experts to the ‘rhetoric’ of their work and by illus-

trating how arguments in specialized fields are both different from and

similar to those in the public realm. As critics have begun to note, however,

such work often amounts to little more than a ‘dimensionalization’ of the

special field: it shows how a particular practice can be re-described in the

terms of rhetoric, but it is unclear what theoretical or practical gains actually

accrue from such a hermeneutic exercise (see, e.g., Gaonkar, 1990, 1997).

The second project, by contrast, couples argument and design in a more

necessary relationship. From this perspective, urban design is seen not

simply to involve argument but to be, at bottom, about argument. The focus

Argumentation 12: 147–166, 1998.

© 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.



of such inquiry is on the ways buildings and cities themselves enable and

constrain argument, how the ‘built world’ influences the production and

reception of social discourse. In this kind of inquiry, the planning and

design of urban space is literally the ‘housing’ of rhetoric. It is this kind

of project I attempt here. I will argue that, just as different theories of argumentation embody different attitudes towards public space, different

theories of public space embody different attitudes towards argumenta-

tion. I begin by laying out historical connections between argumentation

theory and the idea of civic virtue. I then analyze discourse norms implicit

in three theories of urban design. Finally, I propose a ‘civic’ vocabulary

of potential interest to both urban designers and argumentation theorists.

I.

Historically, the art of rhetoric (where much of the early development of

argumentation theory can be located) and the self-governing city are closely

linked; in some places and during certain periods, to think about one was

essentially to think about the other. Rhetoric, in such contexts, served as

the primary instrument of civic life; and the city served as the primary scene

of rhetoric. The connection is apparent in a story Cicero tells at the

beginning of De Inventione. Long ago, Cicero writes, men were dispersed,

wandering at large in the fields and forests, and relying chiefly on physical

strength to survive. It was through one man’s reason and eloquence

(‘rationem atque orationem’) that they were induced to assemble together,where they transformed themselves into a ‘kind and gentle folk’ (I.ii.2).

And eloquence continued to play a role in city life even after this founda-

tional act:

[A]fter cities had been established how could it have been brought to pass that men should

learn to keep faith and observe justice and become accustomed to obey others volun-

tarily and believe not only that they must work for the common good but even sacrifice

life itself, unless men had been able by eloquence to persuade their fellows of the truth

of what they had discovered by reason? (I.ii.3)

In Cicero’s story, rhetoric accounts for the origins of the city; the city, in

turn, provides a function and context for rhetoric. Just as virtue cannot be

voiceless if it is to be effective, speech cannot be politically unanchored

if it is to be useful – for Cicero, rhetoric is worthy precisely because it

subordinated to ‘civil’ affairs (I.v.6). Similar myths describing a mutual

relationship between rhetoric and the city are common in the classical era.

Carolyn Miller (1993) has compared various Greek versions of the myth,

showing how Plato and Aristotle tried to weaken the logos/polis bond first

articulated by Protagoras and later re-affirmed by Isocrates and Cicero.

‘Protagoras’ teaching’, Miller writes, ‘makes rhetoric and politics insepa-

rable dimensions of each other: the democratic city requires rhetoric for

148 DAVID FLEMING



its self-constituting operation, and rhetoric must take place within and

concern the affairs of the city’ (p. 223).

There may be some truth to the mythical connection between rhetoric

and the city. The rise of the agora, or central gathering place, in ancient

Greek cities during the first half of the First Millennium, B.C.E., is con-temporaneous with the rise of both democracy and rhetoric. R. E.

Wycherley (1969) has traced the gradual separation of the agora and

acropolis and the privileging of the former during that period. Where the

acropolis was situated on high ground and served primarily military and

religious functions, the agora was situated on flat ground and served pri-

marily commercial, political, and social functions. Where the acropolis was

fundamentally aristocratic or monarchical in nature; the agora was demo-

cratic. As Wycherley argues, ‘[T]he gradual emergence of a large body of

free and equal citizens, all taking a full and active part in political and

social life, guided the architectural growth of the city’ (p. 7), which nowrequired a central, open, and well-drained space for citizens to gather and

conduct business. Discussions of the Greek ‘discovery of politics’ too often

ignore this spatial dimension of early experiments with democracy (see,

e.g., Meier, 1990). One sign of the agora’s importance in the social,

political, cultural, and economic life of Greek cities during this period is

the number and virulence of complaints about it. Aristophanes, Plato, and

Aristotle all denounced the wrangling that occurred in the agora; and the

Persian King Cyrus is supposed to have remarked:

I never yet feared the kind of men who have a place set apart in the middle of the city

in which they get together and tell one another lies under oath (Herodotus, History, I.153;qtd. in Wycherley, p. 55).

The specific connection between the agora and rhetoric is made by Jean-

Pierre Vernant (1982), who argues that writing (re-introduced into Greece

in the 9th C., B.C.E.) made social and political decisions more widely

accessible and allowed for the transference of political sovereignty from

the monarch to the agora, where problems of general interest could be

debated and resolved. And, according to Vernant, once you have the agora,

you have the polis, because the polis implies first of all the preeminence

of speech (specifically, the antithetical demonstrations of public oratory)

over all other instruments of power. What emerges, then, is a reciprocalrelationship between politics and logos:

The art of politics became essentially the management of language; and logos from the

beginning took on an awareness of itself, of its rules and its effectiveness, through its

political function (p. 50).

Eugene Garver (1994) has made a similar point about Aristotle’s rhetor-

ical theory; it is, he claims, ‘embedded in the particular circumstances of

the polis’, a context which was ‘natural’ for Aristotle but ‘unnatural’ for

us (p. 55). Because we no longer live in the kind of community Aristotle

THE SPACE OF ARGUMENTATION 149



lived in, we have transformed rhetoric into a portable techne, usable in all

sorts of non-political contexts. For Aristotle, rhetoric was a restricted, civic

art rather than a universal, professional one. It was the art of the citizen;

and a citizen was, more than anything else, someone unwilling to delegate

the practice of rhetoric (p. 48). (On the connection between eloquence andcivic virtue in the Athens of the 5th and 4th C., B.C.E., see also De Romilly,

1992; Murray, 1990; Schiappa, 1991; and Yunis, 1996.)

The Italian Renaissance offered another sphere for this reciprocal rela-

tionship to be played out, especially in the independent republics of the

northern communes. Petrarch, for example, was aware of the virtues of

the contemplative life but was also strongly attracted to rhetoric. He knew

instinctively that to be a rhetor was to be committed to the practical affairs

of one’s city; and to be active in one’s city was to be, almost by defini-

tion, a rhetor. ‘It is a peculiar characteristic of orators,’ he wrote, ‘that

they take pleasure in large cities and in the press of the crowd, in propor-tion to the greatness of their own talents. They curse solitude, and hate

and oppose silence where decisions are to be made’ (qtd. in Seigel, 1968,

p. 43). According to J. G. A. Pocock (1975), Petrarch was just the begin-

ning of what would soon become a revival of ‘the ancient ideal of homo

politicus (the zoon politikon of Aristotle), who affirms his being and his

virtue by the medium of political action, whose closest kinsman is homo

rhetor and whose antithesis is the homo credens of Christian faith’ (p. 550).

Pocock writes that the ‘civic humanists’ of the 15th C., especially those

associated with the Florentine republic, sought to raise rhetoric to the level

of philosophy, to legitimize the world of ‘face-to-face political decisions’where ‘[t]he rhetorician and the citizen [are] alike committed to viewing

human life in terms of participation in particular actions and decisions, in

particular political relationships between particular men’ (pp. 59–60). Later,

Vico would also attempt to revive the Ciceronian equation of rhetoric and

civic virtue. According to Michael Mooney (1985), Vico held that none of

nature’s gifts was more critical for the orator than a civil education:

simply growing up as part of a city’s life, coming to know its streets and its buildings,

learning its language and its lore, its history and its ways, and in time being trained in

its schools, especially in the company of one’s peers. There is nothing, he concluded, that

can instruct one better in that sensus communis, which is the norm of all prudence and

eloquence (p. 84).

Cartesian analysis, Vico thought, made students incapable of managing

civic affairs; what they needed was the fullness and pliability of rhetoric.

Why does this coupling of discourse and the city seem so strange to

modern sensibilities? Is it because the nation has become the central site

for political argument in our time? Because modern transportation and

communication technologies appear to have made shared space irrelevant

for social interaction? Because the public realm has become increasingly

private? Because our urban centers have experienced such deterioration and

decay? According to Hannah Arendt (1958), the history of the West since

150 DAVID FLEMING



the disappearance of the city-state is the story of the gradual abasement of

the vita activa: ‘a way of life in which speech and only speech made sense

and where the central concern of all citizens was to talk with each other’

(p. 27). Thomas Bender (1984) has depicted a crucial moment in this story,

the time at the end of the 19th C. when the close connection between civicand scholarly culture in American higher education was broken. In the 18th

C., Bender writes, learned associations typically included lay intellectuals

as well as professional ones; but by the 1880s, academic scholarship had

oriented itself towards national rather than civic associations. The result,

Bender argues, was that the emergent professionals severed intellectual life

from place, leaving Americans with an impoverished public culture.

Michael Halloran (1982) tells a similar tale about the rise and fall of rhetoric

in American colleges. In the late 18th C., he argues, rhetoric was the central

subject in the post-secondary curriculum. Consequently, the role of the

English language in the world of practical affairs was emphasized; oralcommunication (especially forensic disputation and political declamation)

was privileged; and the ability to speak to diverse audiences, including local

dignitaries, was a prominent goal. One hundred years later, rhetoric had

been demoted to a minor place in higher education, diminished by the

concept of belles lettres, the specialization of the curriculum, and the

changing role of education itself, which came to be seen not as the prepa-

ration of leaders for the community but the means by which individuals

could advance in society.

The time may be ripe for a re-coupling of logos and the polis. The

rhetoric revival of the past half century has reminded us that language isvery much a communal affair, its study requiring an appreciation for local

knowledge, situated practice, and cultural values. In argumentation theory,

for example, the traditional interest in formal validity has been supplanted

(or, at least, enriched) by a growing interest in informal analysis and eval-

uation, where logical considerations are embedded in ethical and political

norms, where theories of good reason are informed by theories of good

character and good community. In Douglas Walton’s (1989) model of

‘persuasion dialogue,’ for example, the arguer is seen to be under a double

obligation: to prove his or her theses from the concessions of his or her

interlocutor and to cooperate with that interlocutor’s attempts to do the

same (pp. 3–9). Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (1992) have

proposed a ‘Ten Commandments’ of critical discussion with similar rules.

And Jasper Neel’s (1988) notion of ‘strong discourse’ also effects a union

of good reason and good community. ‘Strong discourse,’ Neel claims, is

discourse which has been tested in public life; it is strong both by finding

adherents and by generating and tolerating competitor discourses (p. 208).

For Sandra Stotsky (1991), meanwhile, a good writer is above all else

someone who meets certain moral responsibilities, who considers other

writers as intelligent as him- or herself, who gathers all relevant informa-

tion on a topic, who uses facts accurately, who assumes an open-minded




reader, etc. Finally, Stephen Toulmin’s (1992) recent model of rationality

explicitly connects logical, ethical, and political norms. Here, reasonable-

ness is a matter of several kinds of ‘respect’, of which respecting the

demands of ‘basic intelligibility’ (i.e., formal validity) is only one com-

ponent. Rationality also entails respect for the ‘natural grain of the world,’respect for the ‘projects of others’ (as both individuals and collectives),

respect for the special nature of the case at hand, and respect for the stand-

points of one’s hearers or readers. The very word ‘respect’ here is remi-

niscent of Protagoras’ myth of the city, where physical attributes and

technical skills are distributed differentially, but where mutual respect and

justice are shared by all; without them, Protagoras says, the city cannot

even survive, much less flourish (Plato, Protagoras, 320D–328D).

My question is this: do such theories of argumentation – which make

reasoning a matter of formal validity and sensitivity to others – presuppose

a particular organization of physical space? That is, does good argumentrequire contexts in which arguers are daily confronted with other arguers

holding different views but united by common problems? Does argument

benefit when arguers have easy access to central and safe public places

devoted to informal and formal social contact, when interlocutors believe

that they share in the governance of a shared world? Finally, when rhetori-

cians, argumentation theorists, and political philosophers talk about public

discourse, shouldn’t they be talking with architects and urban designers as

well? After all, scholars and professionals in all these fields share an interest

in the ‘public sphere’ – that metaphorical or literal realm of public dis-

course that many believe to be in a state of decline. Among rhetoricians,argumentation theorists, and political philosophers, the decline of the public

sphere is manifest in the contemporary impoverishment of moral discourse

(Bellah et al., 1985, 1991; Booth, 1974; MacIntyre, 1981), the failure of

civil disagreement (Elshtain, 1995; Glendon, 1991), and the victory of infor-

mation over argumentation (Habermas, 1970, 1989; Lasch, 1990). But

architects and designers are also concerned about the decline of the public

sphere. The urban landscape of North America, they claim, is in trouble:

our cities (with their suburban sprawl and shopping malls) don’t seem like

‘real’ cities at all: they’re centerless, socially fragmented, and restlessly

commercial; they’re ugly, depressing, and scary; they lack livability and

community. In the words of ‘edge city’ residents asked to describe their

town, they are places without soul (Garreau, 1991, p. 8; see also Kay, 1997;

Kowinski, 1985; Kunstler, 1993; Rybcyznski, 1995; and Sorkin, 1992).

Is it possible that these two critiques are related? Is the rhetorician’s

complaint about the deterioration of public discourse also a complaint about

the decline of public space? And is the designer’s complaint about the

deterioration of public space also a complaint about the decline of public

discourse? What follows is an attempt to answer these questions through

a reading of three theories of urban design.

152 DAVID FLEMING



II.

Jane Jacobs was an ‘urbanologist’ who served during the 1950s as asso-

ciate editor of Architectural Forum. Her landmark 1961 book, The Death

and Life of Great American Cities, has a design appeal not found in othersociological analyses of the city. The book is an attack on orthodox urban

planning of the 1950s, particularly the influence of such luminaries as

Ebenezer Howard, Lewis Mumford, Sir Patrick Geddes, Clarence Stein,

Raymond Unwin, and Le Corbusier. According to Jacobs, city planning in

her time privileged central control by experts and relied on the in-

appropriate model of the English country town. These theories evinced a

hostility for large cities, a preference for low-density settlements, a pre-

occupation with private housing, and an obsession for simplicity, order, and

self-sufficiency. Against all of this, Jacobs’ model city is the old mixed-

use, crowded streets of her own Greenwich Village.For Jacobs, cities are by definition full of strangers. In this, she resem-

bles Richard Sennett (1977), who would later make the presence of

strangers in cities the key social fact behind the 18th C. rise of the public

sphere. It is the absence of intimacy in public life that, for Jacobs, Sennett,

Arendt, and others, creates the very possibility for ‘civilized’ social

behavior. Because she treats cities as places full of strangers, Jacobs empha-

sizes those places where strangers are most likely meet: streets and side-

walks.2 Good streets and sidewalks, for Jacobs, are diverse and lively places

which generate three social benefits.

First, a city of good streets and sidewalks is safe. Peace is kept by the

people themselves; there is a clear demarcation between public and private

space (the streets and sidewalks being public); people watch the public

spaces (‘their eyes are on them,’ in Jacobs’ terms); and the sidewalks are

in constant use. The streets of the safe city are store-, bar-, and restaurant-

filled and therefore lively at all hours. ‘Under the seeming disorder of the

old city,’ Jacobs writes, ‘is a marvellous order for maintaining the safety

of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence

is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes’

(p. 50).

Second, the city of good streets and sidewalks is one that generates

contact. But note that this contact is neither the intimate contact of the homenor the formal contact of the assembly or courtroom. It is the casual contact

of strangers and acquaintances. ‘Cities are full of people,’ Jacobs writes,

‘with whom, from your viewpoint, or mine, or any other individual’s, a

certain degree of contact is useful or enjoyable; but you do not want them

in your hair. And they do not want you in theirs either’ (p. 56). Such casual

contact, over time, among people on non-intimate but civilized terms, grad-

ually builds up ‘a feeling for the public identity of people, a web of public

respect and trust, and a resource in time of personal or neighborhood need’

(p. 56). Jacobs’ description of this contact leaves no doubt that it is pri-




formal contact (see p. 56); but this is not emphasized and never clearly

explained.

Like Jacobs, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the University

of California at Berkeley, authors of A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings,Construction, set about to formulate principles for building and maintaining

the good city. But if Jacobs’ key virtues were aliveness and diversity and

her enemy the dullness of 1950s urban renewal, Alexander’s virtues are

wholeness and health and his enemy the societal insanity of the 1960s and

70s (much of the funding for this 1977 book came from the National

Institutes of Mental Health). The book is comprised of 253 ‘patterns,’ each

pattern consisting of a problem that occurs in the human environment and

a design guideline for solving the problem. It is the relationship among

the patterns, however, that is the central message of the book: when you

build a thing, Alexander writes, you ‘must also repair the world around itand within it’ (p. xiii). The patterns proceed from the largest (#1 is work

toward independent, self-governing regions in the world, each with a

population between 2–10 million) to the smallest (#242 is build a bench

outside your front door, so people can watch the street). In between are

patterns such as #190: vary ceiling heights throughout the building and #71:

in every neighborhood provide still water for swimming. Many of the

patterns evince a profound concern for good communication; for example,

#159 is locate each room so that natural light comes from more than one

direction. The reason?

Rooms lit on two sides create less glare around people and objects; [this] allows us toread in detail the minute expressions that flash across people’s faces, the motion of their

hands . . . [L]ight on two sides allows people to understand each other (p. 748).

Alexander has much to say about the relationship of geography to self-

government. For example, the book prescribes an intricate layering of

political communities. First, there is the region of 8 million (#1). Such a

region, Alexander writes, has natural boundaries and its own economy; it

is autonomous, self-governing, and has a seat in world government. Beyond

this size, people are too remote from the political process; smaller than this,

the region has no voice in global affairs. Alexander writes of this pattern:

We believe the independent region can become the modern polis – the new commune –

that human entity which provides the sphere of culture, language, laws, services, economic

exchange, variety, which the old walled city or the polis provided for its members

(p. 13).

Second, there is the city of 500,000 (#10). Alexander argues that only

with concentrations of 300,000 people or more, can you have a central-

ized business district with ‘magic,’ that variety of life that only great con-

centrations of people have. He’s more interested, however, in the next layer

of political space: the community of 7,000 (#12). Here the pattern language

seems to support Plato’s contention that the perfect community has a




population of 5,040 (factorial 7); it also seems to accord with the old rule

that in a polis everyone should be able to gather in one place and hear an

unamplified speaker; and it is about the size of the old direct democracies

of New England. On this score, Alexander quotes Paul Goodman, whose

rule of thumb for self-government is that no citizen should be more thantwo friends away from the highest member of a local unit; Alexander

computes this to roughly 5,500 people, assuming 12 good friends per

person. In spatial terms, the optimum size for Alexander’s self-governing

community is 75 acres, an area that can be traversed by walking in about

10 minutes; at a density of 60 persons per acre, this would amount to about

4,500 people. All of this, of course, sounds suspiciously like the ‘neigh-

borhood’ of modern planning lore, which is often defined as the popula-

tion surrounding a single elementary school and typically comes in at about

7,000 residents. Whatever the rationale, Alexander argues that in a city sub-

divided into communities of 5–10,000 people, there is the possibility of adirect connection between the man or woman on the street and his or her

local officials and representatives. Each such community should have the

power to initiate, decide, and execute its own affairs (police, schools,

welfare, streets, etc.). And Alexander recommends that local political

forums be situated in highly visible and accessible places, so that each

community has a political ‘center of gravity,’ a place where each resident

feels at home, and where he or she can talk directly to the person in charge.

Next comes the neighborhood of 500 (#14). People need an identifiable

spatial unit, Alexander argues. Because most people limit their ‘home base’

to just a few blocks, roughly 300 yards across, and because human groupscannot coordinate themselves to reach basic agreements if they are too

large, Alexander recommends neighborhood groupings of approximately

500. The fifth layer of political geography is the house cluster of 50 (#37).

People tend to confine their local visiting, Alexander claims, to their imme-

diate neighbors, so he recommends arranging houses to form identifiable

groups of 8–12 households around common land and paths. ‘With one

representative from each family, this is the number of people that can sit

round a common meeting table’ and make wise decisions (p. 200). Finally,

there is the self-governing work or office group of about 10 (#80): de-

centralized, autonomous, face-to-face, self-regulating, and personal.

In laying out this political geography, Alexander says very little about

how self-government would actually work at the level of speech acts. He

does, however, include several patterns explicitly devoted to political dis-

course. So, for example, #44 says that visible and accessible town halls

need to be placed in each community of 7,000. Such places would include

common territory where people can debate policy and where they are

encouraged to linger and gather. This territory, Alexander continues, should

contain both a public forum, with sound system, benches, walls for notices,

etc., and a ‘necklace’ of community projects, including free office space,

meeting rooms, office equipment, etc.

156 DAVID FLEMING



Also of rhetorical interest here are patterns that attempt to limit the

intrusion of the automobile into human space (e.g., #11). The problem with

cars, Alexander argues, is that they spread people out and keep them

apart.

It is quite possible that the collective cohesion people need to form a viable society just

cannot develop when the vehicles which people use force them to be 10 times farther

apart they have to be. It may be that cars cause the breakdown of society simply because

of their geometry (p. 66).

In another pattern, Alexander argues that no more than 9 percent of any

10-acre area should be devoted to parking (#22).

People realize that the physical environment is the medium for their social intercourse

. . . when the density of cars passes a certain limit, the environment is no longer theirs

. . . social communion is no longer permitted or encouraged (p. 122).

The book also recommends that each community have a promenade, a placewhere people can go to see and be seen, to rub shoulders, and confirm their

community (#31). And there is a pattern (#21) recommending that resi-

dential buildings be limited to four stories in the belief that people who

live in high rises are isolated from ground-level, casual society.

Alexander’s project is more ambitious than Jacobs’; the casual contact

of the street, with which Jacobs is exclusively concerned, is here integrated

into a vision that also prescribes an intimate geography and formal, public

spaces as well. And this, in fact, may be its weakness for our purposes;

because he describes the good human landscape with an almost religious

comprehensiveness, Alexander may not provide the vocabulary we are afterif our primary concern is separating out public discourse as a bounded

problem.

If Jacobs’ city is lively and diverse; and Alexander’s town, whole and

healthy; the kind of space associated with ‘the New Urbanism’ is explic-

itly intended to evoke ‘community.’ According to Peter Katz’s 1994 book

The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, this recent

approach to architecture and planning is self-consciously bent on repairing

our fragmented social landscape.

Unlike Kevin Lynch’s (1981) Good City Form, which is skeptical of a

direct, primary relationship between settlement form and the quality of

social life, proponents of the New Urbanism claim emphatically that bad

urban design creates weak communities, and good urban design creates

strong ones. Peter Katz (1994), for example, writes that suburban sprawl

– a big enemy here, along with the automobile, modern architecture, and

free-wheeling capitalism – has ‘fragmented our society – separating us from

friends and relatives and breaking down the bonds of community that had

served our nation so well in earlier times’ (p. ix). Similarly, Peter Calthorpe

(1994) argues that the 40-year growth of suburbs and edge cities in North

America has left us with a ‘profound sense of frustration and placeless-




ness’ (p. xii). Our urban and regional geography, he writes, ‘seem to have

an empty feeling, reinforcing our mobile state and the instability of our

families’ (p. xii). For Elizabeth Moule and Stefanos Polyzoides (1994),

the traditional American model of city-making, in which a grid was cut

for both public and private use, has been abandoned. Architecture is nowabout self-expression; transportation needs dominate planning; and the

private realm is privileged over that which is common, the ‘shared space’

which brings people together to relate to one another (p. xxi).

The New Urbanism, Katz writes, returns to a ‘cherished American icon’:

the compact, close-knit community (p. ix). Perhaps the most explicit state-

ment of the New Urbanism has been developed by Andres Duany and

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (1994). Their focus is on what they call Traditional

Neighborhood Development (TND), which contains five principles. First,

a neighborhood should have a center and an edge. This contributes, they

argue, to the ‘social identity of the community’ (p. xvii). The center isalways public space (a square, green, or important intersection), and it is

the locus of the neighborhood’s public buildings (post office, city hall, day-

care center, churches, shops, etc.). The edge is typically recreational open

space or thoroughfare. Second, the optimal size of the neighborhood is a

quarter-mile from center to edge, equivalent to a 5-minute walk at an easy

pace. This makes the neighborhood accessible without cars. Third,

according to Duany and Plater-Zyberk, the neighborhood should have a

balanced mix or fine grain of activities: dwellings, shops, workplaces,

schools, churches, and recreations all interspersed with one another. This

is especially important for residents, like the very young and very old,who are unable to drive. The mix should also contain a range of housing

types, from above-shop apartments to single family houses. Fourth, the

neighborhood should structure building sites and traffic on a fine network

of interconnecting streets. This shortens pedestrian routes, diffuses traffic,

and slows cars down. And, because the streets are designed for both

pedestrians and automobiles, casual meetings that ‘form the bonds of com-

munity’ (p. xix) are encouraged. Fifth, priority is given to public space

and to the appropriate location of civic buildings (government offices,

churches, schools, etc.). This, proponents of TND argue, fosters commu-

nity identity and civic pride. To Duany and Plater-Zyberk’s five princi-

ples, Calthorpe (1994) adds the tenet that the New Urbanism should be

applied throughout the region, at any density, and also to the region as a

whole (p. xi).

Seaside, Florida, is Duany and Plater-Zyberk’s most famous design. Built

in the early 1980s on 60 acres of seaside land, it is a self-contained com-

munity with a projected population of 2,000, including 350 houses and

another 300 dwellings in apartments and hotel rooms. According to Katz

(1994), the overriding goal in the conception of the town was that of

‘fostering a strong sense of community’ (p. 3) and reversing the trend

toward alienation in suburban life. Seaside does this, he claims, by, first

158 DAVID FLEMING



of all, asserting the primacy of public over private space. Located first in

the plan were the public places: the school, town hall, market, post office,

shops, etc.; attention was also given to the streets, the walks, and the beach,

all of which are clearly common property. The houses are close together,

each of a unique design, with consistent setbacks, required front porches,no garages, etc. And everything is within a 5-minute walk. To Vincent

Scully (1994), Seaside has succeeded ‘more fully than any other work of

architecture in our time has done, in creating an image of community, a

symbol of human culture’s place in nature’s vastness’ (p. 226). Scully is

savvy enough to know, however, that the real force behind Seaside is its

draconian building code:

Architecture is fundamentally a matter not of individual buildings but of the shaping of

community, and that is done by the law (p. 229).

The law makes us free, Scully writes, by binding us together so we canlive without fear.

Unfortunately, Seaside may be a bit too precious; ‘community’ here turns

out to be what people think community should look like and not necessarily

a place of communal activity. In addition, there’s the problem of strangers,

which Jacobs, Sennett, and others had posited as the social fact around

which all urban thinking should revolve. There are no strangers in Seaside;

and here we run up against another problem with ‘community.’ As Maurizio

D’Entrèves (1994) has claimed about Hannah Arendt’s project, politics is

not about integrating individuals around a single or transcendent good, it

is about active engagement and deliberation, which proceed best – giventhe unavoidable condition of human plurality – not in an environment of

intimacy and warmth but in one of impartiality and trust. 3

III.

Good reasoned discourse, most argumentation theorists now believe, is

more than just a matter of logical form and valid inference; it is also a

matter of ethical and political considerations and the cooperative inquiry,

dispute resolution, and good deliberation that they facilitate. If such dis-

course requires not just respect for basic intelligibility but also respect for

the projects of others, then, as arguers, we would seem to benefit from

having frequent formal and informal contact with many others, especially

those who hold views different from our own, who demand reasons from

us when we advance our arguments, and from whom we demand reasons

when they advance their arguments, but who nonetheless share with us

the responsibilities of managing a common world, who are, in a sense, our

‘civic friends,’ although we may not be intimately connected to them, and

we may differ in almost every way from them. I don’t know what the

common world that promotes such discourse would look like in all its




material configurations; but I believe that argumentation theorists and urban

designer have much to teach one another as they pursue that world. One

of the things that the preceding analysis has revealed, I believe, is a set of

underlying issues or problems shared by argumentation theorists and urban

designers, a joint vocabulary for talking about, and building, good com-munity. That vocabulary contains at least six key terms: size, density,

heterogeneity, publicity, security, and identity. The first three – size, density,

and heterogeneity – are perhaps implicit in the idea of the city itself. They

are all contained in Louis Wirth’s (1938) definition:

For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and perma-

nent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals (p. 8).

Unfortunately, a community can have size, density, and heterogeneity and

still not have good public discourse. So we also need, I believe, three other

terms: publicity, security, and identity.

First, there is settlement size. Although there is a long tradition of

philosophical speculation about the ideal size (i.e., population) of towns,

neighborhoods, and communities, what may end up being most important

– and here I am following Alexander (1977) – is an intricate layering of

political communities, so that individuals have a range of opportunities

for both voice and affectivity. The good thing about large communities is

that they offer so many possible political groupings, a large community

being divisible in so many different ways. Unfortunately, the center of polit-

ical gravity seems always to drift to the largest sphere, and a problem for

public discourse now is the dearth of local opportunities for learning about,

articulating, and testing political positions. Still, larger communities seemto present the arguer with a greater range of opportunities for observing,

learning, and practicing argument.

Second, there is settlement density. Although crowding in cities is one

reason people often prefer to live in suburbs and small towns, it may be

density alone which generates the chance encounters needed for a dynamic

public sphere. Density implies a plurality of people sharing a well-defined

common world; and this may be a necessary condition for the kinds of good

dialogue and strong discourse described above. Because if good discourse

is that which is made rational for others and that which is tested in public

against competitor discourses, then a dense settlement will likely havegreater potential than a sparsely-populated one for bringing interlocutors

into both informal and formal contact.4

Third, there is settlement heterogeneity. In a city, heterogeneity can refer

to either a diverse mix of inhabitants (by age, race, class, culture, ideology,

etc.) or a diverse mix of city forms and functions (what Jacobs celebrates

as the ‘mixed-use’ neighborhood, where places of residence, recreation,

and business commingle). The first kind of heterogeneity would seem to

force arguers to more effectively and responsibly consider diverse points

of view when advancing their own positions; the second would seem to

160 DAVID FLEMING



promote communities where the public and private spheres are closer to

one another, where the different parts of citizens’ lives are more effectively

integrated, where government, for example, is a more visible part of the

human landscape rather than a separate domain somewhere downtown or

in Washington. From a rhetorical point of view, a fine grain of use wouldseem to make public discourse less opaque.

Fourth, there is settlement publicity. The issue here is what proportion

of a community should be open, accessible, shared, common, and criticiz-

able; or, to put it somewhat differently, how much ‘action’ should be social

action, where citizens are responsible to one another rather than simply

pursuing private projects. Bellah et al. (1991) define publicity as ‘that which

is expressed in speech or writing in public’ (p. 159). Similar notions can

be found in Habermas (1989); Gutman and Thompson (1996), where the

‘principle of publicity’ states that ‘[t]he reasons that officials and citizens

give to justify political actions, and the information necessary to assessthose reasons, should be public’ (p. 95); and Crick (1992), where ‘the

unique character of political activity lies in its publicity’ (p. 20). Clearly,

good public discourse requires territory where all residents have the right

to appear, to see and be seen, to hear and be heard. A participant in the

1990 Harper’s Forum ‘Whatever Became of the Public Square’ argued that

the collmon space of New York City’s subway system may be one reason

there is less racial tension there than in Los Angeles: ‘Although the public

interaction is inchoate – rolling our eyes together at fools or irate passen-

gers, perhaps an occasional courtesy – at least the people see one another’

(‘Whatever Became,’ p. 51). As Jacobs, Sennett, Arendt, and others argue,a strong public life requires common space that is somewhere in between

intimacy and isolation, between familial warmth, on the one hand, and

absolute segregation on the other. There must be places, like streets and

sidewalks, where we can appear to one another as strangers and acquain-

tances; but there must also be places, like libraries and political parties,

where we can learn and build factions, and places like town halls and

courthouses, where we can debate differences and resolve conflicts.

Fifth, there is settlement security. The issue here is how ‘human’ we

want our landscape to be, how protective we are of our smallness and

fragility. As a matter of security, in other words, we might want to limit

the intrusion of cars in our social space; to ensure that there is density but

not too much; that there is mixed use but not chaos; that there is publicity

and contact but also privacy and protection.

Finally, there is settlement identity. To what extent should we be com-

mitted to creating and maintaining cities and communities that we collec-

tively identify with, that we feel we belong to, whose history we know, that

have a soul, that are outward manifestations of shared values. From a dis-

cursive point of view, the design of cities could contribute to the tendency

of rhetors to think more often in the first person plural.




A settlement that scored high on all of these dimensions – a place with

large numbers of different people in frequent contact, a place where people

identify with one another even as they reveal their differences, a place with

safe public spaces for gathering and decision-making – may provide a better

context for the development and flourishing of argument than a place thatscored low on these factors – a place that was sparsely populated, homo-

geneous in citizenry or function, and predominantly devoted to private

pursuits. The former kind of community is what Michael Sorkin (1992)

calls a place of ‘authentic urbanity’ – a city based on physical proximity,

free movement, and a desire for collectivity (p. xv), and which he sees as

an ally in the effort to reclaim democracy. The latter, meanwhile, evokes

the contemporary North American suburb, a place that would seem to be

an unpropitious context for learning and practicing good public discourse.

But my primary objective here has not been to bash suburbs or lament the

passing of the polis, but rather to help develop an interdisciplinary languagefor describing, building, and maintaining ‘good community’ whatever its

size and shape. More than anything else, the analysis contained here

suggests, I believe, that the design of the built world is always, implicitly

or explicitly, the design of the discursive world; and that the promotion of

good discourse may well require certain kinds of spatial arrangements. In

this regard, rhetoric and urban planning cannot and should not be neutral

towards one another; as if we could talk about discourse without talking

about the common world that brings us together and separates us, or talk

about buildings and towns as if they were not part of our social landscape

as well.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to thank the following for comments on earlier versions

of this paper: Prof. Ernest Steinberg of the School of Architecture and

Planning at the University of Buffalo; Prof. Reed Way Dasenbrock of the

English Department at New Mexico State University; Prof. Robert J.

Czerniak of the Program in City and Regional Planning at NMSU; Jake

Riger, an undergraduate student in City and Regional Planning at NMSU;

audience members at my OSSA presentation in St. Catharines; and the guest

editors of this issue.

NOTES

1 For general introductions to what is variously called ‘the rhetoric of inquiry,’ ‘the rhetoric

of science,’ or ‘the rhetoric of the disciplines and professions,’ see Nelson, Megill and

McCloskey (1987) and Simons (1989, 1990). For work specifically on the rhetoric of design,

see Ackerman and Oates (1996), Cuff (1985, 1989, 1991), Dunlap (1992), Fischer and

162 DAVID FLEMING



Forester (1993), Fleming (1996, 1997), Forester (1989), Margolin (1989), Medway (1996),

and Schön (1983).2 Whyte (1988) also gives primary place in urban studies to the street; for him, it is ‘the

river of life of the city’ (p. 7).3 In the interests of space, I have omitted a fourth theory of urban design of potential interest

to rhetoricians and argumentation theorists, that described in Kevin Lynch’s 1981 book Good City Form. Lynch’s book is primarily concerned with the adaptation of form to individual

behavior; because of this, and because it is presented at such an abstract level, it is somewhat

different from the other three books discussed in this paper. Lynch proposes a set of five

performance dimensions for gauging such adaptation: vitality, sense, fit, access, and control.

Two additional dimensions are meta-criteria, always appended to the others: efficiency and

justice. Vitality is the degree to which settlement form supports and protects human biolog-

ical requirements and capabilities, like sustenance and safety. These are values very widely

held, Lynch argues. Sense is the degree to which a settlement can be mentally perceived,

differentiated, and structured. The first component of a ‘sensible’ settlement is identity, the

extent to which a person can recognize a place as unique. The second component of sense

is structure, the extent to which one knows where one is and how other places are

connected to it. Such orientation enhances access, enlarges opportunity, and reduces confu-sion. Other components of sense are congruence, the match between spatial and non-spatial

structures; transparency, the degree to which one can perceive how the settlement works;

legibility, the degree to which residents can communicate via symbolic features; and, finally,

significance, the degree to which the settlement form as a whole communicates certain values,

processes, history, the nature of the universe, etc. Fit is the degree to which settlement form

matches the actions people engage in or want to engage in. But ‘action’ here is mostly labor-

and work-oriented; and, in fact, the first example concerns factory labor and the extent to

which physical form impedes or enables behavior. The key criterion for fit is adaptability,

the ability of a place to be adapted to future functions. Access is the ability to reach other

persons (e.g., family, friends, etc.), activities (residence, work, recreation), material resources

(food, water, etc.), places (shelter, open space, landscapes), and information. Key criteria

for measuring this dimension include equity, diversity of accessible resources, and controlover access. Finally, control is the degree to which use and access to settlement form are

controlled by its users. Lynch distinguishes among many different kinds of control: right of

presence, right of use and action, right of appropriation, right of modification, and right of

disposition. The dimensions of good control are congruence, the extent to which the actual

or potential users of a space control it; responsibility, the extent to which those who control

a place have the commitment, power, and information to do it well; and certainty, the degree

to which people understand the control system.4 See Gordon and Richardson (1997) and Ewing (1997) for a recent exchange on the benefits

and ills of ‘sprawl.’

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